I did a search for this and didn't come up with any threads, so I thought I'd post it. For the better part of the last year, my buddy and I have been using starsan to drop the ph of our sparge water. I know this sounds weird, but hear me out.
The reasoning is that when collecting wort, you want to collect as much as possible, however, you don't want your runnings to get below 1.010 or you risk extracting tannins. This, of course, is because as you sparge more and more water, the ph of your mash will rise. Tannins aren't extracted in water with a ph below 6, but once the ph rises above 6, you get tannins.
Now, just to clarify, we usually cut off runnings before 1.010 anyway, but we just want to be sure not to extract ANY tannins. We literally just put about 1 or 2 tiny drops of starsan in our few gallons of sparge water and that is enough to drop the ph from around 8 to 5. We of course verify this with a ph meter. The amount of starsan is so small that it does absolutely nothing to the taste of the water, and in all honesty, us homebrewers accidentally get more starsan in our finished beer anyway between using it to sanitize various things such as carboys, kegs, buckets, and bottles.
I had my reservations at first, and I let my brew buddy do it on a few of his batches before I did it on mine. (It was his idea.) Once his beer came out great, with no noticeable difference, I started doing it to mine. We've probably brewed around 15 batches using this method, and it's worked great.
Anybody else ever try this? Any thoughts or questions?
The reasoning is that when collecting wort, you want to collect as much as possible, however, you don't want your runnings to get below 1.010 or you risk extracting tannins. This, of course, is because as you sparge more and more water, the ph of your mash will rise. Tannins aren't extracted in water with a ph below 6, but once the ph rises above 6, you get tannins.
Now, just to clarify, we usually cut off runnings before 1.010 anyway, but we just want to be sure not to extract ANY tannins. We literally just put about 1 or 2 tiny drops of starsan in our few gallons of sparge water and that is enough to drop the ph from around 8 to 5. We of course verify this with a ph meter. The amount of starsan is so small that it does absolutely nothing to the taste of the water, and in all honesty, us homebrewers accidentally get more starsan in our finished beer anyway between using it to sanitize various things such as carboys, kegs, buckets, and bottles.
I had my reservations at first, and I let my brew buddy do it on a few of his batches before I did it on mine. (It was his idea.) Once his beer came out great, with no noticeable difference, I started doing it to mine. We've probably brewed around 15 batches using this method, and it's worked great.
Anybody else ever try this? Any thoughts or questions?